Fermented & preserved
Shoyu Mame
Shoyu mame — koji-fermented soybeans steeped in raw soy sauce
Soybeans fermented with koji are combined with rice koji, steeped in raw soy sauce, and aged over a month — a fermented food of northern and central Nagano sometimes called 'edible soy sauce,' entirely unrelated to the Kagawa dish of the same name made from fava beans.
- Origin: Nagano
- About 180 km northwest of Tokyo
What it's made of
Steamed soybeans or black beans are fermented with koji mold, combined with rice koji, and soaked slowly in raw soy sauce. Over more than a month of aging, the koji's savor seeps through, and a bite is said to release a soft burst of soy sauce aroma -- something like 'edible soy sauce.' It bears no relation, in ingredients or method, to the dish of the same name made from fava beans in Kagawa.
How it's made
Soybeans or black beans fermented with koji are combined with rice koji and soaked in raw soy sauce. Stirred by hand daily as its condition is checked, it's left to age for over a month while the bean koji and rice koji meld together, people say. It's used like a seasoning -- dabbed on tofu or vegetables, or standing in for soy sauce over simmered greens or natto.
Why it took this shape
In a region where koji-fermented foods such as rice koji and salt koji are woven into daily life, the practice of fermenting soybeans and steeping them in soy sauce is said to have grown up alongside them. The wide swing between warm and cold is said to suit a slow fermentation, and the month-plus of aging it takes seems to be exactly what draws out the depth of flavor. In the Hokushin region, it's said to have been a familiar dish at New Year's.
Dishes in the same style
- Achara ZukeWhite melon, eggplant, and lotus root are pickled in a sweet vinegar spiked with red chili — the name is said to trace to the Portuguese 'achar', carried in through Hakata Bay's old trade, and an odd number of vegetables is used for Obon hospitality.
- AhodakiOld takuan pickle, once its flavor and aroma have faded, is desalted and simmered again in soy sauce, a pantry staple from the Hokusei area. Its name — playfully self-deprecating, roughly "doing a foolish thing" — nods to eating it well past its prime, a frugal way to waste nothing.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Also from Nagano
- Anyoji RamenSaku's miso ramen built around Anyoji miso, held to be the root of Shinshu miso.
- Gudakusan Miso ShiruRoot vegetables like daikon, carrot, and burdock go generously into this everyday miso soup of Nagano. Packing it with vegetables is said to allow less miso overall, and wheat dumplings are sometimes dropped in to make it a meal in itself.
- HangoroshiSticky rice, pounded only halfway to a texture called hangoroshi, is coated in sweet bean paste or roasted soybean flour — eastern Nagano's version of botamochi and ohagi, called one name in spring and the other in autumn, a festive sweet that busy farm households could put together quickly.
- Hoshikabocha no EgomaaeKabocha squash, sliced into strips and sun-dried until brittle, is rehydrated and tossed in ground perilla seed — a preserved dish of the Kinasa area born from the need to keep squash, which spoils easily over winter, also used simmered or as filling for oyaki.
- Hoba MakiRice-flour dough kneaded with hot water wraps sweet bean paste, then steams inside a magnolia leaf — a Kiso festival mochi. With no oak trees in the mountains, magnolia stood in, and locals say the leaf's scent settles in best the next day.